2018 HYUNDAI SONATA — Complaint #1857537
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about ENGINE AND ENGINE COOLING:ENGINE:OIL/LUBRICATION:SUMP/TANK:DRAIN PLUG filed December 5, 2022
NHTSA complaint #1857537 (ODI reference 11496158) concerns a 2018 HYUNDAI SONATA and was filed on December 5, 2022. The owner reports the failure occurred on July 5, 2022. The report was geocoded to Texas based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as engine and engine cooling:engine:oil/lubrication:sump/tank:drain plug, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same HYUNDAI SONATA cohort independently describe similar engine and engine cooling:engine:oil/lubrication:sump/tank:drain plug failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 2018 HYUNDAI SONATA shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
My car started leaking oil from the oil drain bolt area. I took it to the dealer and they said the oil pan had a defect, they called it a âweld crackâ. A quick internet search shows that this is a very widespread issue.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1857537 |
| ODI Number | 11496158 |
| Date Filed | December 5, 2022 |
| Failure Date | July 5, 2022 |
| VIN | 5NPE34AF1JH |
Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.